Ecclesiastes

Introduction to Ecclesiastes
(Willesden Clergy Conference October 2003)

A church member who was a devout golfer came to talk to his priest one day and said “Father, I have one really Big Question about the faith. Are there going to be golf courses in heaven? I have to know."

"Well," said his priest, "I'm not really sure, but tonight I'll say a special prayer and see if God will tell me the answer."

The next Sunday, when the service ended and the congregation was shaking hands with the priest on the way out, the golfer cornered him again. "Did you get the answer, Father? Are there going to be golf courses in heaven?"

Well, George," the priest replied, "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

"Tell me the good news first," George said.

"The good news is that, yes, there are golf courses in heaven. Beautiful courses, where the sun is always shining, the rough is not too deep, there are no sand traps, and you never have to wait to tee off."

"Hey, that's great!" exclaimed the golfer excitedly. "But what's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is that St Peter has you down to tee off this coming Tuesday morning at 8."

Ecclesiastes deals with the one Big Question - the Meaning of Life, the Universe & Everything. (42 - v 42 of Eccles).

And it comes up with Bad News (quite a lot of it actually) and Good News.

There will be two parts to this Bible Study this morning: a general introduction; and a short sermon on one verse that attempts to recontextualise Ecclesiastes for the present Western culture.

The Offices - take you through the great sweep of Scripture: the good bits, boring bits, bloodthirsty bits - and the puzzling bits. Ecclesiastes is one of the puzzling bits that nearly didn’t make it into the canon.

Scholars have suggested a number of different authors (they would wouldn’t they) from Solomon (unlikely - no mentions of King of Jerusalem are probably a literary device to emphasise the wisdom of the preacher) to as many as 9 different authors within the book. (JEPD chant at Div Faculty.) Qoheleth - Hebrew root, to assemble. So assembler of wise sayings or (more likely) assembler of the people, the president, the one who calls the ecclesia together (hence Ecclesiastes).

Yet despite these supposed diverse authors and themes, at it’s simplest, there is an underlying unity to the book: Qoheleth looks at our puzzling, repetitious lives, that relentlessly and universally lead to death, and says: “Even if we do not clearly understand, there is something deeper going on.”

Or put in another way: the Bad News is that there is not much point looking for meaning “under the sun” (a phrase used 39 times); the Good News is that by implication there is a God and meaning “beyond the sun” (the unknown God, a common theme in ANE religion - talk to John Chapman about wife’s PhD) (Shemesh - Gen 1 etc)

Lady Helena Levy story from last Parish Mission: lady with cocktails answers door: “I’m afraid I’m an atheist.”
“O my dear, I am so terribly sorry.”

Qoheleth could not have been that modern and strange aberration, ‘the atheist’. He was a theist, trying to make sense of things.

Stephen Pinker & Fraser Watts interview in Third Way (Oct 2003) - still discussing Eccles (Pinker’s favourite Bible book - some have mischievously argued that Eccles 10.2 is Blaire’s favourite verse...) - Pinker & Watts trying to make sense of the brain and human consciousness. Pat of Qoheleth’s Bad News is that we are just like the animals (3.12-21). Pinker on the contrariness of atheism quote.

So in a way, Qoheleth is in a similar position to us - not dealing with people who don’t believe there is something else there
- but dealing with people who act as if the only important things are those that make them secure in secular society, here under the sun
- this he asserts is vanity, futility and a chasing after the wind.

But at the same time, like most of the Wisdom literature, Job and Jonah, Proverbs and some of the Psalms - he won’t let us get away with trite, easy answers. (5.1f)

My faith became more credible to my siblings when it became messier!

Qoheleth raises two other, ever contemporary problems:
The Problem of Knowledge & Wisdom (1.17f) He moves from enlightenment pursuit of knowledge to the madness and folly of Dada-ism, absurdism, the trippy 60s - drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll. And it is all a painful dead end.

The Problem of Evil - oppressors prosper! (4.1f) Postmodernity has no answer to the jackboot. One of the problems facing the West today, and Christians in particular - we do not know the answer of how to deal with violent evil. (Iraq & terrorism etc)

For Qoheleth, all these puzzles and mysteries, all these disturbing realities of life under the sun, leave no other choice than (12.13f): “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

Thank goodness that we have more to go on than Qoheleth; that like Paul we can say” “What a wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom 7.24f)

George Herbert toyed with some of these issues in his poem The Pulley that plays on the Pandora’s box theme - but instead of chaos being unleashed and only hope remaining in the box, God keeps ‘rest’ in the bottle - there is never a complete and satisfactory answer to Life, the Universe and Everything - we can never be wholly at rest.

The Pulley

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
The beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
Rest in the bottom lay.

For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.

ETERNITY IN THEIR HEARTS

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Eccles 3.11)

Why do so many 20 somethings still live at home with their mum? My two nephews, 20 & 23 are prime examples.

Well, there are probably lots of perfectly good reasons, but Douglas Coupland’s book Generation X has a little cartoon of a 20 something son talking to his clearly exasperated father: “It’s like this dad. You can either have a mortgage, or a life. I’m having a life.”

Although written two and a half thousand years ago Ecclesiastes is a fascinating book. It’s famous opening words could be paraphrased: “Vanity of vanities, all is postmodernity.”

This captures something of the mood of contemporary society. It is meaninglessness with attitude; emptiness covered up by all the good things money can buy. Tesco ergo sum - I shop, therefore I am. The loneliness and ennui is eased by friendships and music, sex and sometimes drugs; and lashings of humour.

“Yet” says the Preacher, “they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Postmodernity is one of the most exciting, painful, challenging, opportunity-filled, anxiety ridden, faith building, depressing, faith destroying, enjoyable and contradictory of times to be alive. Postmodernity is the cultural climate that is increasingly pervading the world, spreading like a virus through TV, the arts, popular culture, ‘new’ politics and designer religion.

What would the Preacher of Ecclesiastes make of it all?

He would most certainly speak from the point of view of identifying with, and being part of, the culture. This can be one of the church’s biggest stumbling blocks, because most Christians are firmly locked into modernism, the outgoing philosophical climate; yesterday’s weather.

Worse still, many of us feel that there is something inherently Christian about modernism, despite the fact that it has only been around for a few centuries, although the Judaeo-Christian faith has been around for at least 35 centuries.

“She who marries the spirit of the age is sure to be a widow in the next”. So we must not ‘marry’ either modernity or postmodernity. But we must be so in touch with our culture that we feel its pain and know how to apply the balm of the Gospel.

Increasingly in our society, purpose is giving way to play; design to chance; founts of wisdom to pools of knowledge; Reason to reasons; the metanarrative, the Big Picture, to the micronarrative, the local story - the soaps, Big Brother. My primary school children know far more about the world of Pokemon and Harry Potter, than they do about the Christian Gospel that shaped their culture and gave them their school.

Dominic Crossan puts it this way in The Dark Internal:

“There is no lighthouse keeper. There is no lighthouse. There is no dry land. There are only people living on rafts made from their own imaginations. And there is sea.”

But eternity is firmly set in our hearts, says the Preacher: a divine uncomfortableness, a dis-ease with what is.

Postmodernity is a way of coping with that dis-ease. It does not make sense of life, but it helps you cope.

Christianity is also a way of coping and making sense of life. Not complete sense, for now we see through a glass darkly.

So we need to let God grasp people’s hearts and imaginations before God can transform their minds. And we must learn to live with uncertainty. Evangelism has never been easier; discipleship has never been harder.

How then should we live?

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts.”

As Christians we believe that we are not alone in the universe, because the Bible, the Church and Reason call us to believe that there is a ‘transcendent’ God, who is before and beyond all things.

Many postmoderns are sick of themselves. But where can they look but to themselves if there is no ‘Other’? We must present clearly the intimations of transcendence which God has planted throughout his universe - the eternity in our hearts:

Beauty and love, order and satisfaction, suffering and meaninglessness, the mystery of the Mass, the splendour of music and liturgy, the depth of Christian fellowship - all point to an Utterly Other. We believe that the ‘eternity within’ is no less than ‘Christ in us’, the hope of glory, the imago Dei, the image of God.

God, the Holy Trinity, is community, and in that community of love we find our identity in the postmodern sea of shifting images and personal fragmentation. Jesus’ command has never been more relevant: “Love one another as I have loved you… by this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” If we cannot demonstrably love one another, then we are failing the Christ whom we seek to follow.

It is as we worship and love in our Christian communities that we mirror, albeit imperfectly, the eternal God.

At best, the Church’s response to whatever intellectual climate it has found itself immersed in, has been - not a renewed set of dogma - but a renewed love of God through our worship, and a renewed effort to love and serve one another.

The death of dear friends and our own failing powers remind us that “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” But it’s time to fade comes.

Yet “He has also set eternity in their hearts” and in it’s time it will blossom into a newer and fuller life which starts now and which will grow on into the eternity of paradise.